“You must. If you’ve got a love-urge, then give it its fulfilment.”
“I haven’t got a love-urge.”
“You have. You want to get excited in love. You want to be carried away in love. You want to whoosh off in a nice little love whoosh and love yourself. Don’t deny it. I know you do. You want passion to sweep you off on wings of fire till you surpass yourself, and like the swooping eagle swoop right into the sun. I know you, my love-boy.”
“Not any more — not any more. I’ve been had too often,” laughed Aaron.
“Bah, it’s a lesson men never learn. No matter how sick they make themselves with love, they always rush for more, like a dog to his vomit.”
“Well, what am I to do then, if I’m not to love?” cried Aaron.
“You want to go on, from passion to passion, from ecstasy to ecstasy, from triumph to triumph, till you can whoosh away into glory, beyond yourself, all bonds loosened and happy ever after. Either that or Nirvana, opposite side of the medal.”
“There’s probably more hate than love in me,” said Aaron.
“That’s the recoil of the same urge. The anarchist, the criminal, the murderer, he is only the extreme lover acting on the recoil. But it is love: only in recoil. It flies back, the love-urge, and becomes a horror.”
“All right then. I’m a criminal and a murderer,” said Aaron.
“No, you’re not. But you’ve a love-urge. And perhaps on the recoil just now. But listen to me. It’s no good thinking the love-urge is the one and only. Niente! You can whoosh if you like, and get excited and carried away loving a woman, or humanity, or God. Swoop away in the love direction till you lose yourself. But that’s where you’re had. You can’t lose yourself. You can try. But you might just as well try to swallow yourself. You’ll only bite your fingers off in the attempt. You can’t lose yourself, neither in woman nor humanity nor in God. You’ve always got yourself on your hands in the end: and a very raw and jaded and humiliated and nervous-neurasthenic self it is, too, in the end. A very nasty thing to wake up to is one’s own raw self after an excessive love-whoosh. Look even at President Wilson: he love-whooshed for humanity, and found in the end he’d only got a very sorry self on his hands.
“So leave off. Leave off, my boy. Leave off love-whooshing. You can’t lose yourself, so stop trying. The responsibility is on your own shoulders all the time, and no God which man has ever struck can take it off. You ARE yourself and so BE yourself. Stick to it and abide by it. Passion or no passion, ecstasy or no ecstasy, urge or no urge, there’s no goal outside you, where you can consummate like an eagle flying into the sun, or a moth into a candle. There’s no goal outside you — and there’s no God outside you. No God, whom you can get to and rest in. None. It’s a case of:
‘Trot, trot to market, to buy a penny bun,
And trot, trot back again, as fast as you can run.’
But there’s no God outside you, whom you can rise to or sink to or swoop away to. You can’t even gum yourself to a divine Nirvana moon. Because all the time you’ve got to eat your dinner and digest it. There is no goal outside you. None.
“There is only one thing, your own very self. So you’d better stick to it. You can’t be any bigger than just yourself, so you needn’t drag God in. You’ve got one job, and no more. There inside you lies your own very self, like a germinating egg, your precious Easter egg of your own soul. There it is, developing bit by bit, from one single egg-cell which you were at your conception in your mother’s womb, on and on to the strange and peculiar complication in unity which never stops till you die — if then. You’ve got an innermost, integral unique self, and since it’s the only thing you have got or ever will have, don’t go trying to lose it. You’ve got to develop it, from the egg into the chicken, and from the chicken into the one-and-only phoenix, of which there can only be one at a time in the universe. There can only be one of you at a time in the universe — and one of me. So don’t forget it. Your own single oneness is your destiny. Your destiny comes from within, from your own self-form. And you can’t know it beforehand, neither your destiny nor your self-form. You can only develop it. You can only stick to your own very self, and NEVER betray it. And by so sticking, you develop the one and only phoenix of your own self, and you unfold your own destiny, as a dandelion unfolds itself into a dandelion, and not into a stick of celery.
“Remember this, my boy: you’ve never got to deny the Holy Ghost which is inside you, your own soul’s self. Never. Or you’ll catch it. And you’ve never got to think you’ll dodge the responsibility of your own soul’s self, by loving or sacrificing or Nirvaning — or even anarchising and throwing bombs. You never will....”
Aaron was silenced for a moment by this flood of words. Then he said smiling:
“So I’d better sit tight on my soul, till it hatches, had I?”
“Oh, yes. If your soul’s urge urges you to love, then love. But always know that what you are doing is the fulfilling of your own soul’s impulse. It’s no good trying to act by prescription: not a bit. And it’s no use getting into frenzies. If you’ve got to go in for love and passion, go in for them. But they aren’t the goal. They’re a mere means: a life-means, if you will. The only goal is the fulfilling of your own soul’s active desire and suggestion. Be passionate as much as ever it is your nature to be passionate, and deeply sensual as far as you can be. Small souls have a small sensuality, deep souls a deep one. But remember, all the time, the responsibility is upon your own head, it all rests with your own lonely soul, the responsibility for your own action.”
“I never said it didn’t,” said Aaron.
“You never said it did. You never accepted. You thought there was something outside, to justify you: God, or a creed, or a prescription. But remember, your soul inside you is your only Godhead. It develops your actions within you as a tree develops its own new cells. And the cells push on into buds and boughs and flowers. And these are your passion and your acts and your thoughts and expressions, your developing consciousness. You don’t know beforehand, and you can’t. You can only stick to your own soul through thick and thin.
“You are your own Tree of Life, roots and limbs and trunk. Somewhere within the wholeness of the tree lies the very self, the quick: its own innate Holy Ghost. And this Holy Ghost puts forth new buds, and pushes past old limits, and shakes off a whole body of dying leaves. And the old limits hate being empassed, and the old leaves hate to fall. But they must, if the tree-soul says so....”
They had sat again during this harangue, under a white wall. Aaron listened more to the voice than the words. It was more the sound value which entered his soul, the tone, the strange speech-music which sank into him. The sense he hardly heeded. And yet he understood, he knew. He understood, oh so much more deeply than if he had listened with his head. And he answered an objection from the bottom of his soul.
“But you talk,” he said, “as if we were like trees, alone by ourselves in the world. We aren’t. If we love, it needs another person than ourselves. And if we hate, and even if we talk.”
“Quite,” said Lilly. “And that’s just the point. We’ve got to love and hate moreover — and even talk. But we haven’t got to fix on any one of these modes, and say that’s the only mode. It is such imbecility to say that love and love alone must rule. It is so obviously not the case. Yet we try and make it so.”
“I feel that,” said Aaron. “It’s all a lie.”
“It’s worse. It’s a half lie. But listen. I told you there were two urges — two great life-urges, didn’t I? There may be more. But it comes on me so strongly, now, that there are two: love, and power. And we’ve been trying to work ourselves, at least as individuals, from the love-urge exclusively, hating the power-urge, and repressing it. And now I find we’ve got to accept the very thing we’ve hated.
“We’ve exhausted our love-urge, for the moment. And yet we try to force it to continue working. So we get inevitably anarchy and murder. It’s no good. We’ve got
to accept the power motive, accept it in deep responsibility, do you understand me? It is a great life motive. It was that great dark power-urge which kept Egypt so intensely living for so many centuries. It is a vast dark source of life and strength in us now, waiting either to issue into true action, or to burst into cataclysm. Power — the power-urge. The will-to-power — but not in Nietzsche’s sense. Not intellectual power. Not mental power. Not conscious will-power. Not even wisdom. But dark, living, fructifying power. Do you know what I mean?”
“I don’t know,” said Aaron.
“Take what you call love, for example. In the real way of love, the positive aim is to make the other person — or persons — happy. It devotes itself to the other or to others. But change the mode. Let the urge be the urge of power. Then the great desire is not happiness, neither of the beloved nor of oneself. Happiness is only one of many states, and it is horrible to think of fixing us down to one state. The urge of power does not seek for happiness any more than for any other state. It urges from within, darkly, for the displacing of the old leaves, the inception of the new. It is powerful and self-central, not seeking its centre outside, in some God or some beloved, but acting indomitably from within itself.
“And of course there must be one who urges, and one who is impelled. Just as in love there is a beloved and a lover: The man is supposed to be the lover, the woman the beloved. Now, in the urge of power, it is the reverse. The woman must submit, but deeply, deeply submit. Not to any foolish fixed authority, not to any foolish and arbitrary will. But to something deep, deeper. To the soul in its dark motion of power and pride. We must reverse the poles. The woman must now submit — but deeply, deeply, and richly! No subservience. None of that. No slavery. A deep, unfathomable free submission.”
“You’ll never get it,” said Aaron.
“You will, if you abandon the love idea and the love motive, and if you stand apart, and never bully, never force from the conscious will. That’s where Nietzsche was wrong. His was the conscious and benevolent will, in fact, the love-will. But the deep power-urge is not conscious of its aims: and it is certainly not consciously benevolent or love-directed. — Whatever else happens, somewhere, sometime, the deep power-urge in man will have to issue forth again, and woman will submit, livingly, not subjectedly.”
“She never will,” persisted Aaron. “Anything else will happen, but not that.”
“She will,” said Lilly, “once man disengages himself from the love-mode, and stands clear. Once he stands clear, and the other great urge begins to flow in him, then the woman won’t be able to resist. Her own soul will wish to yield itself.”
“Woman yield — ?” Aaron re-echoed.
“Woman — and man too. Yield to the deep power-soul in the individual man, and obey implicitly. I don’t go back on what I said before. I do believe that every man must fulfil his own soul, every woman must be herself, herself only, not some man’s instrument, or some embodied theory. But the mode of our being is such that we can only live and have our being whilst we are implicit in one of the great dynamic modes. We MUST either love, or rule. And once the love-mode changes, as change it must, for we are worn out and becoming evil in its persistence, then the other mode will take place in us. And there will be profound, profound obedience in place of this love-crying, obedience to the incalculable power-urge. And men must submit to the greater soul in a man, for their guidance: and women must submit to the positive power-soul in man, for their being.”
“You’ll never get it,” said Aaron.
“You will, when all men want it. All men say, they want a leader. Then let them in their souls submit to some greater soul than theirs. At present, when they say they want a leader, they mean they want an instrument, like Lloyd George. A mere instrument for their use. But it’s more than that. It’s the reverse. It’s the deep, fathomless submission to the heroic soul in a greater man. You, Aaron, you too have the need to submit. You, too, have the need livingly to yield to a more heroic soul, to give yourself. You know you have. And you know it isn’t love. It is life-submission. And you know it. But you kick against the pricks. And perhaps you’d rather die than yield. And so, die you must. It is your affair.”
There was a long pause. Then Aaron looked up into Lilly’s face. It was dark and remote-seeming. It was like a Byzantine eikon at the moment.
“And whom shall I submit to?” he said.
“Your soul will tell you,” replied the other.
THE END
KANGAROO
This novel was first published in 1923 and is set in Australia. It is an account of a visit to New South Wales by an English writer named Richard Lovat Somers, and his German wife Harriet, in the early 1920s. This appears to be semi-autobiographical, based on a three-month visit to Australia by Lawrence and his wife Frieda in 1922.
Lawrence in Australia
CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1. TORESTIN.
CHAPTER 2. NEIGHBOURS.
CHAPTER 3. LARBOARD WATCH AHOY!
CHAPTER 4. JACK AND JAZ.
CHAPTER 5. COO-EE.
CHAPTER 6. KANGAROO.
CHAPTER 7. THE BATTLE OF TONGUES.
CHAPTER 8. VOLCANIC EVIDENCE.
CHAPTER 9. HARRIET AND LOVAT AT SEA IN MARRIAGE.
CHAPTER 10. DIGGERS.
CHAPTER 11. WILLIE STRUTHERS AND KANGAROO.
CHAPTER 12. THE NIGHTMARE.
CHAPTER 13. “REVENGE!” TIMOTHEUS CRIES.
CHAPTER 14. BITS.
CHAPTER 15. JACK SLAPS BACK.
CHAPTER 16. A ROW IN TOWN.
CHAPTER 17. KANGAROO IS KILLED.
CHAPTER 18. ADIEU AUSTRALIA.
CHAPTER 1. TORESTIN.
A bunch of workmen were lying on the grass of the park beside Macquarie Street, in the dinner hour. It was winter, the end of May, but the sun was warm, and they lay there in shirt-sleeves, talking. Some were eating food from paper packages. They were a mixed lot — taxi-drivers, a group of builders who were putting a new inside into one of the big houses opposite, and then two men in blue overalls, some sort of mechanics. Squatting and lying on the grassy bank beside the broad tarred road where taxis and hansom cabs passed continually, they had that air of owning the city which belongs to a good Australian.
Sometimes, from the distance behind them, came the faintest squeal of singing from out of the “fortified” Conservatorium of Music. Perhaps it was one of these faintly wafted squeals that made a blue-overalled fellow look round, lifting his thick eyebrows vacantly. His eyes immediately rested on two figures approaching from the direction of the conservatorium, across the grass-lawn. One was a mature, handsome, fresh-faced woman, who might have been Russian. Her companion was a smallish man, pale-faced, with a dark beard. Both were well-dressed, and quiet, with that quiet self-possession which is almost unnatural nowadays. They looked different from other people.
A smile flitted over the face of the man in the overalls — or rather a grin. Seeing the strange, foreign-looking little man with the beard and the absent air of self-possession walking unheeding over the grass, the workman instinctively grinned. A comical-looking bloke! Perhaps a Bolshy.
The foreign-looking little stranger turned his eyes and caught the workman grinning. Half-sheepishly, the mechanic had eased round to nudge his mate to look also at the comical-looking bloke. And the bloke caught them both. They wiped the grin off their faces. Because the little bloke looked at them quite straight, so observant, and so indifferent. He saw that the mechanic had a fine face, and pleasant eyes, and that the grin was hardly more than a city habit. The man in the blue overalls looked into the distance, recovering his dignity after the encounter.
So the pair of strangers passed on, across the wide asphalt road to one of the tall houses opposite. The workman looked at the house into which they had entered.
“What d’you make of them, Dug?” asked the one in the overalls.
“Dunnow! Fritzies, most likely.”
“They were talking English.”<
br />
“Would be, naturally — what yer expect?”
“I don’t think they were German.”
“Don’t yer, Jack? Mebbe they weren’t then.”
Dug was absolutely unconcerned. But Jack was piqued by the funny little bloke.
Unconsciously he watched the house across the road. It was a more-or-less expensive boarding-house. There appeared the foreign little bloke dumping down a gladstone bag at the top of the steps that led from the porch to the street, and the woman, the wife apparently, was coming out and dumping down a black hat-box. Then the man made another excursion into the house, and came out with another bag, which he likewise dumped down at the top of the steps. Then he had a few words with the wife, and scanned the street.
“Wants a taxi,” said Jack to himself.
There were two taxis standing by the kerb near the open grassy slope of the park, opposite the tall brown houses. The foreign-looking bloke came down the steps and across the wide asphalt road to them. He looked into one, and then into the other. Both were empty. The drivers were lying on the grass smoking an after-luncheon cigar.
“Bloke wants a taxi,” said Jack.
“Could ha’ told YOU that,” said the nearest driver. But nobody moved.
The stranger stood on the pavement beside the big, cream-coloured taxi, and looked across at the group of men on the grass. He did not want to address them.
“Want a taxi?” called Jack.
“Yes. Where are the drivers?” replied the stranger, in unmistakable English: English of the old country.
“Where d’you want to go?” called the driver of the cream-coloured taxi, without rising from the grass.
“Murdoch Street.”
“Murdoch Street? What number?”
“Fifty-one.”
“Neighbour of yours, Jack,” said Dug, turning to his mate.
“Taking it furnished, four guineas a week,” said Jack in a tone of information.
Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence Page 338